


the woods are all taking it back

by sodiumflare



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/F, Genderbend, Goats, Rule 63, Russia, Trains, a minor Harry Potter reference, murderously depressing weather
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 04:17:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5033389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sodiumflare/pseuds/sodiumflare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm telling people that you're my cousin, and that you're a bit slow and don't speak," Sherlock told her apologetically.</p><p>"So you're saying," Joan said wearily, "<i>Not</i> to keep up? Good grief, girl, make up your mind." They were on a train through Poland, on the twenty-somethingth straight hour of travel, having fled London with new passports from Mycroft, no word to anyone else, and the only thing they could be reasonably sure of was that they were, so far, still alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the woods are all taking it back

Joan had anticipated the cold. She hadn't anticipated the darkness.

The sun sinks below the horizon in the early afternoon, and creeps up in mid-morning. By December, the frost along the windowsil is more or less permanent ("permafrost," she tells Sherlock, grinning through painfully chapped lips, and Sherlock flashes an amused smile, quick like a wink).

("It's not much different than London," Sherlock tells her softly, but it's different enough. And London has its lights and life - so different from this landscape, with its scrub and ice.)

Sherlock speaks Russian - because of course she does, because she was at Oxford in the 80s, when she was teenager and angry and bored and too clever by half - and her teacher was a Danish national ("His name was Jan, he was a botany student. Lovely cook, terrible cellist," Sherlock told her on the train, holding Joan's frozen fingers tucked between her own), so Sherlock's spoken accent seems to have put everyone off guessing their country of origin.

In turn, this means that Joan can't speak to anyone who's not Sherlock with any degree of skill, unless they run into any Pashto speakers (and even then, Joan's Pashto is limited to basic transactional phrases, polite comments about weather and food, a handful of blistering invectives courtesy of volunteer security forces, and "Don't shoot, I'm a doctor.").

"I'm telling people that you're my cousin, and that you're a bit slow and don't speak," Sherlock told her apologetically.

"So you're saying," Joan said wearily, " _Not_ to keep up? Good grief, girl, make up your mind." They were on a train through Poland, on the twenty-somethingth straight hour of travel, having fled London with new passports from Mycroft, no word to anyone else, and the only thing they could be reasonably sure of was that they were, so far, still alive.

They're in their fourth town in as many weeks, tracing a half-vanished trail through the Russian wilderness. If wilderness is even the right word: central Russia resembles nothing so much as an overgrown basketball court. She thinks of them as nameless towns - if they have names, she doesn't know them, and they're gone before she could learn. Joan's breath still catches in her chest; she caught flu just after they arrived in the country, she thinks, and it's still rattling in her lungs like a bird in a cage.

Sherlock is out. Sherlock is nearly always out, although she's supposed to come back with groceries: their food supplies have dwindled to some wrinkled potatoes and an onion on the kitchen table. Sherlock's not alone: an American veteran ("He's not American _per se_ ," Sherlock said, "He's Texan. It seems to be an important distinction.") named Jack who seems to find Sherlock unfathomably charming, and so seems to be with them. Joan can read his military training in his stance and the set of his shoulders - is this what it's like being Sherlock, in some limited way? - and has stories about Iraq like Joan has stories about Afghanistan.

"Dumbass war," Jack had said one night over chilled vodka, an uncharacteritic non-sequitor, and Joan tossed back her drink in agreement. The alcohol burned and her throat was the only warm thing she can feel. Sherlock was watching them, silent, eyes flicking between them, and Joan wondered what she was seeing.

(Later, with Sherlock's hands tucked around her - they've taken to sharing a bed now, because that's something they do now, because Sherlock is warm, and there - she's almost awake, almost aware of Sherlock's fingers tracing her scarred shoulder, memorizing one of the ways the war had marked her.)

But this is life during wartime now, or something like it: long periods of bewilderment and boredom punctuated by short instances of panic and motion, throwing sweaters into bags and jumping onto a train in the predawn light. Into cars. Into the back of a pickup, in one memorable instance. With the goats.

Fucking goats.

("Fucking crazy girl," Jack said companionably, sucking his knuckles where he'd rapped them on a frozen panel scrambling to the train from the platform, and Joan had to agree. Her mouth tasted like a chimney: she hadn't had time to clean her teeth before they fled. Sherlock, of course, was flushed, eyes glinting in the sun, scarf knotted around her neck, grinning, victorious.)

A knock comes from the door - something that Sherlock insists is a section a Brahms piece, which: sure, whatever. Joan lets her in, shutting the door quickly behind her in hopes of trapping some of the heat in the room. It's futile, probably - she's not convinced there is any heat in the room, really - but Joan was a solider, and she knows the importance of routine.

Sherlock is unloading groceries on the table - bread, soft cheese, onions, hard, tiny apples, hand soap (Sherlock, who is so unable to handle activities of daily living in London, is remarkably suited to life on the run). She shakes a few last shreds of onion paper onto the table, drapes the bag over a chair, and presses a kiss to Joan's hairline on her way back to the door to kick off her boots.

That's a thing they do now, it seems. Life during wartime, after all. Long periods of boredom. Brief moments of - not.

"Jack has a message from Mycroft," Sherlock says.

"We're sure?" Joan asks, because she likes Jack, but trust is a different matter now. Since Moriarity.

"Probably," Sherlock says. "It's in a code we used when I was 15, and it's unlikely Moriarty would be able to use it so effectively."

(Faintly bewildered by the whole plot but gamely along for the ride, Jack's taken to referring to Moriarty as "You-Know-Who," a reference that more or less makes a whistling noise as it passes cleanly over Sherlock's head.)

"What's the news?"

Sherlock purses her lips. "Faintly optimistic," she says, finally. "I'm not sure."

"Ah." Joan sinks back into her chair by the heater, scritches a fingernail into the frost on the window.

Sherlock's hands settle over her shoulders like birds. "That said," says Sherlock, "I think that - soon; not now, but soon - we might be able to return home."

"When, do you think?"

Sherlock traces a finger along Joan's part. "No later than spring."

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Radical Face's "Haunted":
> 
>  
> 
> _The woods are all taking it back_  
>  _We've overstayed our welcome_  
>  _It's time we were gone_


End file.
